Urine samples are routinely tested for medical identification of illness or drug abuse. Manufacturers of urine assay kits typically ask their employees to donate urine samples, then pool and treat the samples to manufacture appropriate controls. It is difficult to obtain a large pool of consistent quality, in part because the employees drink varying amounts of coffee, take varying amounts of prescription and over-the-counter medication, and/or take vitamins. Urine also has an odor that makes it disagreeable for most chemists to work with.
Synthetic urine samples have been developed to assure that the instrumentation used to test urine samples is working properly. However, urine tests also routinely require that the urine samples are at a specified range of temperatures, at or near body temperature, at the time of collection, and the synthetic urine samples are stored at room temperature.
Synthetic urine samples have also been developed for defeating drug tests as well as protecting people from genetic profiling without their consent. These urine samples are also typically stored at room temperature by individuals seeking to pass a drug test, and therefore will not be accepted for testing by laboratories that test the temperature of the urine samples. Some individuals who might test positive for the presence of drugs or be subjected to undesired genetic screening if they were to provide their own urine spend all day, every day, walking around with a sample of synthetic urine stored under their armpit or between their thighs so that it is always at body temperature. This is an inconvenient means for providing urine samples at the appropriate temperature, and is not suitable for laboratory use.
It would be advantageous to provide a synthetic urine that can be stored at room temperature in dried or concentrated form and mixed with water to provide a synthetic urine sample that is within an acceptable temperature range for use in drug screening tests. The present invention provides such a synthetic urine.